More than 100 people are involved in a transplant operation... and we can't waste time and resources if there is a chance the caretakers aren't up for an awesome responsibility.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
We don't have enough solid organs for transplantation; not enough kidneys, livers, hearts, lungs. When you get a liver and you have three people who need it, who should get it? We tried to come up with an ethically defensible answer. Because we have to choose.
People who live through transplants or disasters like Sept. 11 are survivors.
Every year, nearly two-thirds of the approximately 200,000 patients in need of a bone marrow transplant will not find a marrow donor that matches within their families.
There is a pent-up demand from people who want to clone their dead children.
When you're doing kidney transplants, you have to find out who can exchange kidneys with whom, doing blood tests to make sure it's true. You can't just work on the preliminary data. Then you have to organize the logistics.
I think we can allow the therapeutic uses of nuclear transplant technology, which we call cloning, without running the danger of actually having live human beings born.
A patient healthy enough to undergo a kidney transplant might someday no longer need dialysis. That would free up a slot for a new patient.
Organ donation is very personal to me. My mother, before her death, was on kidney dialysis for several years.
Removal of an organ is difficult and dangerous. There have been several deaths of healthy donors. I think myself, I would be hesitant to participate as a liver donor. It's a very tricky operation.
Five to six thousand people die every year waiting for organs, but nobody cares.